Burnt the Fire
by Sionnain
Summary: The Phoenix wears many faces. Jean isn't so sure she likes this one. Jean GreyXEmma Frost of a sort, Phoenix.


**Burnt the Fire**

_Tiger, tiger, burning bright/in the forests of the night-_

"Do you want to talk about the Phoenix?"

Jean looks at the woman who is supposed to be Emma; white clothes and fair skin and pale eyes blending together in an achromatic portrait of smug disdain.

"No," Jean says, sulky, and in the astral plane her voice sounds like someone's dropped a leadened weight in the hollow of a bell. It rings with slow vibrancy, something tangible and alive. "Not to _you_."

"Then why are we here, darling? Why am _I_ here?" Emma cocks her head, and there are lights caught in the fall of her hair. White lights that gleam in the depths of the pale strands, making her head glow with a halo.

Jean recognizes the irony of it, even in the astral plane, even in dreams. Emma is no angel. _Neither am I_. "I don't know. I can't control what I dream about. You're here, asking me stupid questions, and I guess it's because you came to see me today in my office. What is it, that Ebenezer Scrooge told Marley? You're just a bit of an overdone potato?"

Emma laughs. It doesn't sound like bells tinkling or anything cliched, which Jean is grateful for, because if her subconscious is likening Emma's little cat laugh to bells ringing then Jean has more problems than she thought. "The cooks are paid too well to overcook anything. Besides," Emma says, standing up, "Scrooge was wrong. Marley was really there. He wasn't a potato. He was a warning."

"Will I be visited by three spirits, then?" Jean looks up, but there is no sky, here. Just endless fields of white, that stretch forever, going nowhere and everywhere at once.

"Not three," Emma says, and her voice changes. Jean looks up sharply, breath catching in that way that only happens in dreams. Emma's eyes are glowing white. Stars trapped inside ice. "You only have one ghost, Jean Grey." Emma's voice is no longer Emma's. Her arms spread out, and the fire dancing around her is white tinged with blue.

_you only have me_

Jean wakes up, hands clutching the sheets, staring up at the ceiling. She thinks she sees a shadow on the wall. She thinks it is shaped like a bird. She does not think she will go back to sleep.

_When the stars threw down their spears/And water'd heaven with their tears-_

The next night they are in an office.

Jean does not recognize it. There is a desk, some high-polished cherry wood thing, and it is a striking contrast to Emma's cool blonde paleness. She is perched on the desk, legs crossed, tapping the heel of her shoe against the wood in a rhythmic pattern. _Tap, tap, tap._

"I thought this was more professional," Emma says, indicating their surroundings.

Jean is sitting, predictably, on a couch. She scowls. "Nothing about you is professional, Frost."

Emma makes a _tsking_ sound. "Such anger. Why are you so angry, Jean? Is it your parents?"

Jean stares at Emma. Something is wrong, here. The windows, the glass-paned windows behind Emma, look out into space. Deep empty darkness broken by the occasional crystalline burst of light. "What is this?"

"Therapy. What do you think it is?" Emma has a clipboard. Where did that come from? She leans forward, pen poised and ready.

"What--the window," Jean says, confused. The lights are growing brighter. There is a spiral swirl coming into focus. A galaxy. It gets closer and closer, colors brilliant and sharpening by the second from indistinct dust to definable shapes.

"What do you see?" Emma asks, and there is something entrenched in those cool tones, that slightly snide inflection, that is not Emma. It is older, and it belongs beyond the window, perhaps, in the far-reaching depths of the heavens. "What do you see in the window?"

The stars beyond have turned to living flame. Jean hears a triumphant cry, and the _tap tap tap_ of Emma's heel is now the sound of wings beating. She sees a planet, quiet and drifting, and behind it, the rising image of a bird.

"I want to wake up," Jean says, and closes her eyes. _I want to forget._

_it is too late for that_

Jean wakes up, and she is standing at the window. Scott is asleep in the bed behind her. Outside, the sky is covered in clouds, too thick to see the stars.

_What immortal hand or eye/Could frame thy fearful symmetry?_

The ocean stretches before her, calm in the throes of low-tide, a greenish blue fading to black as the sun begins to die.

"Do you think it happened fast?" Jean asks, looking at Emma. Emma is wearing white, of course, and Jean has the passing thought that it must be hard to get sand out of white.

"I think so," Emma says, examining her nails. "I don't know. I have never understood why it matters."

"I don't want people to suffer," Jean says softly, biting her lip. The waves are lapping against the shore; constant, eternal. _Until the world stops in an instant, and everything is gone. Even the sea_.

"People are born to suffer," Emma smiles. There is something terrible and ancient in her expression. "They are born screaming and blind, and they die. It is not for you to decide if the moment comes slow, or in the blink of their short-sighted eyes."

"It is not for you, either." Jean stretches, feeling the pull of muscles, fingers grasping at the sky above. "You think you can do whatever you want, but you can't. There are consequences. There are limits. You are not limitless. If you were, you wouldn't need me."

"And yet I am here."

Jean feels a slow crawl of ice down her spine. "No. You're a figment of my imagination. You're not really here."

"Mmm." Emma stretches her own arms up, and the sea begins to boil. Fire dances on the cusps of waves grown violent, glimmers in the depths of a now-turbulent sea. "Think what you wish."

Jean can feel heat begin to snake out like tendrils towards her body, lashing heat and warmth against her skin like the waves pounding against the shore. It feels like a promise, like a temptation. Emma smiles like Eve with her red-slick apple, delight beckoning in the depths of her eyes, glimmering with embers long un-banked. "Don't you miss your wings?"

_Yes._ "No."

Emma laughs. "You lie so pretty, Jean. But we are patient. We will wait. We will have you, if we want."

"And do you want?" Jean breathes, asking even though she knows she shouldn't, because she has ever been in its thrall, even when she swore she wasn't. No one who has not had its love, the Phoenix, would ever understand what it was like to yearn for its touch even through the fear of its possession.

Emma turns to her, eyes aglow, trapped fire, white heat so bright it burns.

_always, beloved_

The ocean is the color of fire. Emma is gone, now, and in her place, only fire remains.

_On what wings dare he aspire?/What hand dare seize the fire?_

They are on a bed, and it is soft and beautiful and the sheets are the same color as the silk draped artfully over Emma's body. Jean is lying next to her, her hand around Emma's throat, and she is wearing two scraps of cloth, a swirl of orange and gold and red, but the rest of her body is smooth and cool and bare.

"This is ridiculous. Like some man's fantasy."

Emma cannot answer, out loud, because Jean is choking her. The words are as sharped and barbed as they would be if Emma had breath to give them voice. _Scott's? His fantasy, do you think?_

"Emma. God. I hate you." Jean straddles Emma, body moving sinuously and easy. There is something like relief in the gesture. This is Emma. She hates Emma because Emma is trying to ruin her marriage. Emma is not an otherworldy being intent on consuming Jean from the inside and leaving ash in her wake. Emma is just a bitch, a cheap bitch with a bad dye job and fake boobs, and she's not a threat, not at all, and it's nice to choke her here when she can't do it in real life.

Emma's body moves, bucks up, beneath Jean's. _You are foolish. We but wear the face you give us. Though we like this, the passion of your hatred._

Jean stops, sits back on her heels. Runs her hands up and down Emma's body, over the silk. It burns her fingertips. "I wouldn't. Why would I do that?"

Emma's breathing is labored, and she's twisting beneath Jean, her body moving in ways that it should not, as if there are bones places they shouldn't be, as if the muscles are arranged in impossible ways. "Guilt, perhaps?" Emma's fingers reach up, trace over Jean's lips, down her neck. Delve into the heavy fall of Jean's hair. Jean closes her eyes, the touch familiar and terrible at once.

"No," Jean breathes, and she feels warmth, everywhere; between her legs, in her hair, behind her eyelids.

_you want to burn_

"No," she says again, and Emma's hands are on her breasts, licking like flame down her stomach. "_No_!" Jean pushes away, falls back into the depths of the bed. Emma rises up before her, eyes starshine-bright, hair caught in a wind that does not blow. "Not anymore."

"Do you seek absolution, Jean Grey?" It's still Emma's voice, but only just. "The one whose face I wear, she knows. What it is to lose the world in an instant. Yet she lived. Is that why you give me her face, her voice? Absolution?"

Jean rises up on her knees, and reaches out. Hands on Emma's shoulders. She pulls Emma closer, towards her. "That's the thing," Jean whispers, pressing her mouth against Emma's, tasting ash and life and death and want.

"I don't."

She closes her eyes, and opens her mouth, and kisses flame.

_you want to burn_

_Yes._

_What dread grasp/Dare its deadly terrors clasp?_

When she awakens, there is a light in the room. Soft and gold, and inside of her, Jean feels something warm and familiar curl up and purr, vibrating against her skin from the inside, behind her eyes. She rises from the bed in a graceful gesture of spread limbs and easy levitation, and stands before the mirror. Her eyes are glowing white, and her fingers curl against the flame she can feel, like a living thing, pulsing warm and alive in her blood.

Jean does not think she will dream of Emma again. Jean sees herself in the mirror, glowing terrible-bright like a star that died, the last gasp of life before it is swallowed by the darkness. She wonders how long she too will burn, before the end comes.


End file.
